A graph or chart is a diagrammatical illustration of a set of data. Graphs and charts can be used to convey important information, such as numeric quantities, trends and relationships between values. A graph or chart may allow a viewer to quickly grasp comparisons and trends more easily than looking at the raw data. Graphs and charts are of many types. Some of the most common types of graphs and charts include: bar graph, stacked bar chart or relative value chart, clustered bar chart, histogram, line graph, pie chart, area chart, Venn diagram, scatter plot, etc. It may be important to choose the right type of graph or chart to easily and accurately convey information.
Data (e.g., data generated by a business application or a scientific application) which may be of interest to a user, may be stored, for example, in a spreadsheet, a SQL database, Hadoop, or the cloud. Users may need to create a graph or chart to visually represent data (e.g., for display on a computer screen or to include in a report or presentation). Creating suitable graphs or charts usually requires considerable development effort by users. A user may have to individually analyze the data, and select proper variables and scales to properly format the graphs or charts. Further, there can be user-to-user variations and inconsistencies in the graphs or charts created by different users. In the context of data (e.g., data generated by business applications) that is viewed or analyzed by a large number of different users, the user-to-user variations and inconsistencies in the graphs or charts created by different users can be problematic.
Consideration is now being given to systems and methods for uniform chart formatting and annotation.